Obama loses moral plot

THIS may be the most surprising of President Barack Obama’s foreignpolicy legacies: not just that he presided over a humanitarian and cultural disaster of epochal proportions, but that he soothed the American people into feeling no responsibility.

Starvation in Biafra a generation ago sparked a movement. Synagogues and churches a decade ago mobilised to relieve misery in Darfur. When the Taliban destroyed ancient statues of Buddha at Bamiyan, the world was appalled. Today, Islamic State is blowing up precious cultural monuments in Palmyra, and half of all Syrians have been displaced – as if, on a proportional basis, 160 million Americans had been made homeless. More than a quarter-million have been killed. Yet the Save Darfur signs have not given way to Save Syria.

One reason is that Obama – who ran for president on the promise of restoring the US’s moral stature – has constantly reassured Americans that doing nothing is the smart and moral policy. He has implied that because Americans can’t solve every problem, maybe they shouldn’t solve any.

On those rare occasions when the horrors of Syrian suffering threatened to overwhelm excuses for inaction, Obama promised training for the opposition and a safe zone on the Turkish border. Once public attention moved on, plans were abandoned or scaled back. Perversely, the worse Syria became, the more justified the president seemed for staying aloof. Inaction was sold not as a necessary evil but as a notable achievement; the US leading with the head, not the heart.

When Obama pulled US troops out of Iraq, none envisioned the emergence of a full-blown terrorist state. When he announced in 2011 that the time had come for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to step aside, few imagined the extent of the catastrophe.

Even had Obama’s policy succeeded in purely realist terms, though, something would have been lost in the anaesthetisation of US opinion.

America’s determination to help has always been something admirable. But Obama’s successful turning of that on its head is nothing to be proud of.